Some Tips That Helped Me/stuff I Found Out While Experimenting With Shit (mostly Digital Art):

some tips that helped me/stuff I found out while experimenting with shit (mostly digital art):

Use light lights and dark darks, but focus on where you put them. If you're drawing, say, a sphere or smth, dont use one dark color and one light color around the whole thing. Give the shading more variety than that - add the almost-black furthest from the light, and put highlights at the very edge, but use middle tones for shading and lighting in the larger middle areas

Use multiple layers! Not just 1 color, 1 dark, 1 light - space it out further. Maybe you want 3 shading layers for more depth, but only 2 for highlights. Or vice versa. There doesn't have to be an order or pattern - match the amount with how light/dark you want the final product to be

Experiment with opacity. Layer opacity, brush opacity, alllllll that stuff. You can create a lot of depth with it

If you're drawing a shape that isn't basic (something OTHER than circle/square/rectangle/triangle/whatever) think about what that shape would like in real life. Clothes, for example - they aren't basic shapes, even if their lineart looks like it. They have folds, they have wrinkles, they twist and curve around the body, and the size of the clothes vs body size makes a HUGE difference. Focus on shading a big shape, sure, but don't be afraid to zoom in and shade some folds in there too, even if they look out of place.

When picking colors for shading/lighting, change the tint! If you're rendering a person and struggling with skin color, make the darker shade a little more on the pink side, and move the lighting a little more on the yellow side. BUUUUT if the entire picture has a certain lighting color (eg. blue lighting, red lighting, etc), change the rendering colors to match that! (And maybe change the skin color to that shade too, or at least put a layer of that color over it)

Feel free to just, like, stick random colors in there. Oh, you have a rendered cube? And it's RED? Nah bro add some random purple in there. Doesn't need to make sense. It looks interesting and it's fun, sue me. (I've done this while drawing a horse before, added green AND purple to the darkest shadows and I don't think I've ever been happier with shading in my life)

It doesn't HAVE to be blurred and it doesn't HAVE to be hard lines. It can be both. Maybe you want to blur the overall rendering, but add light/dark shapes and not blur them. Maybe you want to have hard shadows but let that whole shape be a gradient. All up to you

Lastly, and most importantly, ITS JUST FOR FUN. You're not going to be burned at the stake if you fuck up one rendered drawing. Not if you fuck up two. Not if you fuck up a million. Not if you fuck up every rendered drawing you've ever done, because your art is YOUR art. Don't focus on producing art for others, make it on your own time because you LIKE to. Have fun with the process, experiment, throw random shit in there. Don't like what you have? That's okay! Want to throw the results into the void so nobody will ever see them again? You do you! You don't have to post everything, you don't have to listen to everyone's criticism, you don't need validation for your own hobby. Just. Have fun.

serious question: how do i render, like give me the most BASIC rendering tips and also not basic rendering tips please

i didn't know what rendering was until today

help me please artists

tbh I don't care what happened to Gabe I've just always wanted to see him come back as a minor antagonist solely bc of angst potential

like kill him or let him live but whatever happened it happened wayy too soon he needed more time to fuck around with the Jacksons

please tell me im not the only one who can't stop thinking about their trauma. about Gabe showing up at the apartment or just some random place. about Sally trying to keep Paul from noticing how much this man affected her. about Percy's heroic, "I'm undefeatable" facade crumbling once he sees his abuser. about him immediately stepping between his mother and the threat he thought was gone. about-

I made a post where I said Gabe doesn't deserve to have been turned to stone. I stand by that post now, but I also get why it offended people. Gabe is a horrible person and a scummy human being. He's an abuser who deserves nothing but the worst. That being said, petrification feels like the wrong answer. It's like the death penalty. Sure it solves the problem, but aren't there much better ways of bringing someone to justice?

Imagine for a moment of Gabe had not been turned to stone. Instead, imagine he had instead lost his job, Sally divorces him, he loses everything. Doesn't that sound like a much more satisfying punishment for someone like him? And if they had gone that route, they could have brought him back as a minor antagonist later in book 5 or something!

I'm actually beginning to sell myself on this whole idea now! I feel like it was a wasted opportunity. Who knew this would all start because I had a moral objection to the idea of petrification?

callback to rule #4, damn

RIP

glad that im not popular enough to have an evil shadow version of my blog that exists just to make contradictions on my posts

Got me thinking about a new worker going in that has no idea people get stuck in there or lose their memories so they're just like "oh cool these NPCs are really interactive" and the whole cast is just screaming at them to fucking HELP THEM

Tadc headcannon, only the headsets transport you into the game, I know this seems obvious but I can’t help but think about a worker going into the digital circus and the others being so confused on how they remember so much stuff and they got to choose their look and (user)name

OH THIS IS ABSOLUTELY ACCURATE

Gangle: I just... feel like I'm not appreciated for who I am as a person. Am i really that bad? Is there some thing I need to change?

Ragatha: *looks at Jax*

Jax, literally shaking with restraint like that one scene with Kinger: Yo u.. a re.. a per fe c tly . goo.d p er son.

And dw EVERYONE is new to the fandom it hasn't even been half a month—

tadc headcanon: they have shitty diy group therapy so they dont get abstracted. Ragatha is 100% the best at it but she doesnt talk about her own problems enough. jax says the most out of pocket shit as per usual, but the environment kinda reminds him not to be a huge bitch. gangle gets a lot of help out of it and it helps her stay together!! sorry if this is inaccurate im new to the fandom hehe